Muhammad was born in Mecca in 570 AD. Two hundred years earlier Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Mecca was at the edge of the Empire. Yes, there were Christian churches there. There were synagogues there too, as well as pagan temples (which is what the Kaaba in Mecca was before Muhammad conquered Mecca).

6
posted on 12/29/2012 2:23:03 PM PST
by PapaBear3625
(You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)

All of Arabia had a great Christian influence at one time, prior to the Demon Possessed, Pedophile, Camel Jockey, Brigand came along.

Many of the early Apostles, including Paul, went to Arabia. Strangely enough, Islam is a Christian Heresy closely related to Arianism, the theological teaching attributed to Arius (ca. AD 250336), a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, that says the nature of Jesus is subordinate entity to God the Father (not God, but created by God).

It is fairly clear that their “prophet” (or at least the people who wrote it all down)...did have some contact with Christians and Jews, albeit they got a very distorted version of the Biblical faiths. We do know that there were types of Christian churches in the 200-600’s or so that either did not believe Jesus was a material (real) person, but rather just a spiritual entity that only appeared human..(so there there was nobody to die on any cross)...and there were a few more odd (to us, anyway) versions..... the Church Councils in the 300-600 years discussed all that stuff and, as we know, decided on the “fully Divine, fully human” formula (the latter part meaning that he really did die on the cross after all).
If we look at where these variant versions were most popular, it was mostly in Egypt and Syria (and trans-caucasia). These are the regions closest to Arabia, and also areas where there was frequent contact vis-a-vis the Arabian desert region.
So, (from my limited knowledge, anyway) it would both seem possible and indeed make sense, stand to reason....
as it would have placed a non-orthodox (what we now call a heretical) variant of Christianity in the region where the authors of their Koran resided.

It would make sense that Christians were in Mecca before the demon visited Mohammed in a cave and convinced him that a minor pagan moon god was the same God as Yahweh/Jehovah. Its too bad that they weren’t more successful. The history of humanity would have been much more peaceful if the locals had laid hands on Mohammed and removed his demons rather than taking up arms and following him to battle.

Think how, as in other regions where Christianity made advanced and efficacious civilizations, Arabia would be now if the spiritually regressive cult of Islam had never crawled from the senseless savage slime.

Mecca could have been Rome and Medina Paris and not the current camel litter boxes infested with benighted bloodthirsty barbarians as they are today.

12
posted on 12/29/2012 3:05:03 PM PST
by Happy Rain
(Outlawing firearms because of Adam Lanza would be like outlawing free speech because of Bill Maher.)

"Two hundred years earlier Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire."

This is a common misconception. The Edict of Milan was granted by Emperor Constantine in the West and Licinius Augustus in the East in 313 granting religious freedom throughout the Roman Empire. In addition, the Edict of Milan ordered the restitution of property confiscated from Christians.

Christianity had to wait many years later under a different emperor to become the official religion of the empire.

Agreed. It is generally recognized that Mohammed cobbled his new religion together from information about Christianity he received from a relative of his wife (who was a monk belonging to a heretical sect), some things he knew about Judaism, and native pagan beliefs.

“as it would have placed a non-orthodox (what we now call a heretical) variant of Christianity in the region where the authors of their Koran resided.”

This is my understanding as well after reading a couple of books calling into question the actual historicity of Mohammad himself.
Got thrown out of a facebook forum because I dared to suggest that Mo never existed!

As to Mecca, it is not quite fair to describe the pre-Mohammedan Kaaba as a pagan temple. It was a focus of Arab unity and had areas devoted to the worship of all the Arab tribe in the area, including both Jewish and Christian tribes. Yes, most of its floor and wall space were devoted to pagan cults, but that is not the whole story.

There is a tradition passed down among Arab Christians that when Mohammed destroyed all the pagan idols in the Kaaba, he found Torah scrolls, which he returned to their Jewish Arab owners, and he also found icons of Christ and the Theotokos, which he did not destroy, but allowed to remain in the Kaaba along the the meteorite fragment his followers associate with Abraham.

Please henceforth get your Imperial and Church history straight: St. Constantine (we Orthodox honor both him and his mother St. Helen with the title “Isapostolos” usually Englished as “Equal-to-the-Apostles”) did not make Christianity the official religion of the Empire. He joined his co-Emperor in legalizing Christianity and moved the capital to a city which was consciously built as a Christian city (Constantinople, or New Rome as he called it, had no pagan temples, but many Christian churches). From edict of Milan in 313 until the proclamation of (Nicene) Christianity as the state religion of the Empire in 380 by St. Theodosius, the Empire had no state religion, which Christianity, Judaism and Greco-Roman paganism all being religio licita (though the latter two came under increasing restrictions during that period — the reign of Julian the Apostate, when Christianity was again persecuted excepted).

20
posted on 12/29/2012 4:58:38 PM PST
by The_Reader_David
(And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)

(there sre some scholars who agree with that, too ... but even if it is wrong and he was 100 percent there, what came out of it has sure caused the world a tremendous amount of grief...)

well, anyway, congratulations!
(there is a pretty nice local fellow here who, some years ago, went to the city dump to scrounge around for some small household items he could repair... they let people in to scrounge and then they get a few dollars from them when the people find anything they want to take home... consider it like a flea market where you bring a shovel is all........so anyway, he found some little kitchen appliance thing and went to check out and the proprietor demanded $10 and this fellow offered $5 and they got into a fight and the customer got evicted. SO for years now, he has claimed to be the only guy any of us know of, who ever got thrown out of the city dump, he takes it as a point of pride.... ha!)

Actually, the tradition among Arab Christians, which recently got scholarly support from the fact that sections of the Qu’ran are nonsense as Arabic, but perfectly intelligible East Syriac, is that Mohammed started as a missionary from the Church of the East (the Nestorian church centered in what is now Iraq and Iran) then fell prey to demonic delusion and set himself up as a warlord.

Interestingly, one of the Nestorian bishops at the time Mohammed began his career was named Gabriel (I think he was the bishop of what is now Kirkuk), and there is a tradition of some bishops bearing the title “Angel” (cf. the Greek Orthodox Bishop of Bosra-Haran in Syria, who still bears the ancient title “the Angel of Haran”, and the style of address to the bishops of Asia Minor used in the Apocalypse of St. John). It is possible that before he fell into delusion, Mohammed reporting that “the Angel Gabriel said...” was simply reporting instructions from his bishop.

24
posted on 12/29/2012 5:22:29 PM PST
by The_Reader_David
(And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)

“SO for years now, he has claimed to be the only guy any of us know of, who ever got thrown out of the city dump, he takes it as a point of pride..”

I wear it with pride as well!
The forum was Islam and Christianity, the intent was to “find common ground” but obviously that is impossible. I think we all know how to become a Christian. The only requirement to become a Muslim is to state that allah is god and mo is his prophet. You must absolutely accept all of teachings without question. We as Christians can question our faith, research historians of the period, and critically analyze our faith. Islam has no such parallel. To question Islam is to be an Infidel!

Exactly, the Caldwell Family from Texas worked in Saudi for 15 years. While they enjoyed a national pass, Penny, her husband Jim and two kids performed a modern miracle.

They not only located the 'real' Mt. Sinai in Arabia, but they found the rock split by Moses staff that produced millions of gallons of water to sustain the Nation of Israel and the livestock they plundered out of Egypt while they wandered around the desert.

All the altars, michvas and monuments they built remain just as they were 3000 years ago. Their most fascinating find however points to the legitimate claim that Israel has to ALL 'the land between the two great rivers'. Millions of rock carvings liter the peninsula of Saud, they include the outline of two human feet traced by their original owner granting a title deed to the citizens of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. No two footprints are alike and bear the initials of their owner.

Without knowing, the Crown Prince of Saud actually gifted a Korean physician with perhaps the most fabulous artifact mankind has ever found. It's a rock that actually bears a carving made of the Prophet Moses feet and bare his official seal. This artifact was found before the Israeli Antiquity Authority knew for certain Moses had an official seal BTW! You can read Penny & Jim's amazing adventure in Fire on the Mountain.

Exactly, the Caldwell Family from Texas worked in Saudi for 15 years. While they enjoyed a national pass, Penny, her husband Jim and two kids performed a modern miracle.

They not only located the 'real' Mt. Sinai in Arabia, but they found the rock split by Moses staff that produced millions of gallons of water to sustain the Nation of Israel and the livestock they plundered out of Egypt while they wandered around the desert.

All the altars, michvas and monuments they built remain just as they were 3000 years ago. Their most fascinating find however points to the legitimate claim that Israel has to ALL 'the land between the two great rivers'. Millions of rock carvings liter the peninsula of Saud, they include the outline of two human feet traced by their original owner granting a title deed to the citizens of the ancient Kingdom of Israel. No two footprints are alike and bear the initials of their owner.

Without knowing, the Crown Prince of Saud actually gifted a Korean physician with perhaps the most fabulous artifact mankind has ever found. It's a rock that actually bears a carving made of the Prophet Moses feet and bare his official seal. This artifact was found before the Israeli Antiquity Authority knew for certain Moses had an official seal BTW! You can read Penny & Jim's amazing adventure in Fire on the Mountain.

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